Getting Back to Our First Brains

Augmenting the second brain system.

Context: I only have a week of experience with this, so most of this post is based on personal intuition and a little outside research. Normally, I would have researched and experimented more, but I was just too excited. I’ll probably release a companion post soon with a more research-backed argument.

Intro

I’ve been an ardent cult member of the Second Brain movement for a year. I’ve done many hours of research on effective note-taking, and spent even more time obsessively taking notes on everything I come across that resonates with me.

This was all in the expectation that my notes would become a tool for thought that would continuously spark ideas and become a frictionless companion to my blogging.

And it does work. I have some cool new insights every so often and I often save research time. But it just doesn’t feel optimal.

On the other hand, I’ve found that simply augmenting your memory instead of supplementing it has tremendous impacts.

Memory Systems

Recently, I’ve been thinking more about the fundamental premise of the second brain movement. The core idea is that our brains suck at remembering things, so we have to take good notes that serve as storage to counter that.

I accepted that for about a year, but recently I’ve noticed that it seems kind of defeatist.

Our memory sucks, so we build extra on top of it? Why don’t we just address the root cause? How can we make our memory better? In other words, how can we “make memory a choice”?

As I looked for ways to augment my memory, I came across the memory system community. Memory systems are tools that help you use the ideals of spaced repetition and active recall. If you don’t know what spaced repetition and active recall are, you should check out Nicky Case’s gamified introduction.

I’ve used memory systems like Quizlet to help me learn content for school, but I never took the next logical step. I can use memory systems to learn all the content I come across in regular life.

If you think about it, using your brain is perfect. Our brains are insanely good at making connections between information. If you can invest a little bit of extra time into memorizing the key insights and facts from the content you consume on top of your standard note-taking, the returns are immense (from personal experience and that of others).

The beauty of using a computerized memory system (shoutout to Anki) is that it automatically manages a review schedule for you based on how easy the card was to remember. This makes it takes less time to memorize information than you might think. Michael Nielsen estimates that an average Anki card takes 4–7 minutes to memorize over 20 years.

This estimate provides a helpful rule of thumb.

If you think that any piece of information is worth ~10 minutes (including creating the card) to know for 20 years, you should put it into Anki.

Sidenote: To memorize a procedure, I would recommend creating a memory palace and connecting all of the steps with locations in the memory palace that you can visit one at a time. I created a simple memory palace of the entrance to my room to memorize the procedures in Julian Shapiro’s excellent writing handbook.

The Results

So far, I’ve memorized just about everything in my notes over the past year as an exercise in how effective Anki is.

So far, the results have been everything I hoped they would be. I’ve come up with new ideas consistently on walks and showers because the information is just in my head.

To be fair, visiting all of my notes from the past year over a short span might be the cause of that, but talking to friends has validated my experience.

Action

If you’re convinced, the best action that you can take from here is to just start using a memory system.

I have a bias towards Anki, but there are tons of other memory systems out there that you can explore.

Before you begin, I would highly recommend checking out at least one of the links below to get a feel for how to use a memory system. Please don’t skip this part, because a small investment in learning how to use memory systems well can save you months of wasted effort.

• https://ncase.me/remember/

• https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/

• https://quantum.country/

I would also highly recommend checking out Gwern Branwen’s essay on the topic if you want to go down a rabbit hole of links about spaced repetition.

If you want to start small with memorization, Julian Shapiro’s post on memorized rules is great. This is a simple way to implement the life advice you consume and build a framework that you can consult for everyday life.